Gulf Coast Diplomacy

Professional Exchange Facilitation: We worked with 161 professional, international visitors with interpreters in 20 groups from Oct 2022 to Sept 2023. These exchange participants attended 119 professional meetings and met with 208 of their professional counterparts and visited four classrooms. 81 of the visitors enjoyed dinner in local homes and all of them had at least one cultural activity on a weekend or evening. The immediate objective of facilitating international exchange in Northwest Florida is to encourage the discussion of best practices between professionals, to highlight our country's diversity, and to promote international understanding of American values and policies. The long-term objectives are a) to provide avenues for further communication to discourage stereotyping, b) to encourage intellectual and cultural activity between Northwest Florida & the rest of the world, c) to protect the United States and American citizens, d) to advance democracy, e) to defend human rights, and f) to encourage economic growth and prosperity in Northwest Florida and the world.

Hospitality & Outreach: To encourage the concept of citizen diplomacy & to give members opportunities to interact with international professionals, we coordinated home hospitality dinners. Forty local hosts invited international professionals to their homes for 81 meals. We also hosted 12 community coffees for 99 international professionals to meet 105 locals and offered the Great Decisions discussion series for eight interested locals to expose them to topics they would likely encounter in a hospitality setting with international visitors. We spoke to 101 locals at four civic organizations about the impact of international exchange in our community and held three receptions to share our mission. We staffed four tables at community events to increase awareness. We promoted the opportunities offered by youth and professional exchange twice in radio interviews, once in a podcast, and extensively on our website, newsletter, and our five social media platforms. The short-term objective of these efforts is to increase knowledge of citizen diplomacy & global affairs in our area. Long-term, we hope these events will build a more vital awareness of US foreign policy goals and will lead to correspondence between our members and guests, helping us to affect US foreign policy and national security "one connection at a time."

Youth Education: To allow local youth to meet these visitors, we welcomed 24 teenagers to our Youth Diplomats leadership program and worked with them for 11 months, 10 months in person, and one month via a four-day virtual exchange in June 2023. We welcomed 32 teens to this fourth year of Camp Global. We hired and trained one local university student to work with them in online facilitation. We hired an additional local college student to assist us with professional exchanges and administrative work. We hosted five U.S. Department of State in-person exchanges for 100 teens from Belize, Brazil, El Salvadore, France, Honduras, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda, and Venezuela. Seventy of these students stayed with host families for 8 - 13 days. We worked with an additional six local teens who joined international teens in Washington, D.C., for four days of leadership training. The 100 international youth who came to Northwest Florida met with 81 local professionals in 55 meetings, eight volunteer activities for 351 volunteer hours, four classroom visits, and 12 cultural activities. The short-term objectives are to expose youth to the world outside our borders & to present them with new educational opportunities. The long-term objectives are a) to encourage youth to think globally, b) to help youth gain and improve workforce development skills, c) to expose them to new opportunities, d) to provide training in leadership to local teens, e) to contribute towards national security by creating intercultural friendships, f) to strengthen democracy in the United States by promoting media literacy to teens.